


Jeeves and the Camera

by triedunture



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Nude Photos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:02:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24236977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triedunture/pseuds/triedunture
Summary: Jeeves takes pictures.This short piece was first posted as a fill toan anonymous memeon LJ on Feb 12, 2010 and was subsequently lost when my LJ was purged. I found the text recently in some old saved files.
Relationships: Reginald Jeeves/Bertram "Bertie" Wooster
Comments: 22
Kudos: 261





	Jeeves and the Camera

It was one of the newer Folding No. 1's from the Kodak Company, with its slick, black bellows sliding cleverly from its black wooden box, its lens shining like an unblinking glass eye. The provided pamphlet explained how even the most novice photographer could use the simple aperture and focus scales to produce a fine negative, which could then be made into a paper photograph with the home processing tank (an optional extra which Mr Wooster, with remarkable foresight, had included).

The camera was heavy and sleek, its fixtures gleaming steel jewels studding the stark blackness of its compact body. Jeeves weighed it in his hands in a scientific fashion while his master watched him eagerly.

"Do you fancy it's just the thing, Jeeves?" he finally asked when it became obvious that there would be no whoop of joy forthcoming.

"It appears quite serviceable, sir." The valet looked up with a quiz in his eyes. "I did not know you had a yearning to become an amateur photog, as I believe they are called in some circles."

"It's not for me, old thing. It's meant for you." Bertie beamed, his grin threatening to split his face. "You're going on your holiday, what? I just thought, well, I thought it would be brilliant."

Jeeves seemed speechless for a moment; he didn't so much as cough for several beats. Then, he bowed his head and passed the beautiful camera back into his master's hands. "Thank you, sir, but I cannot accept such an extravagant gift."

"But Jeeves," Bertie cried, "you deserve a camera made of rubies considering all you do! And besides, I--I would quite like to see some snapshots from your annual adventure. Spain this time, yes? It's difficult for me to imagine you in Spain, in your shirtsleeves, and I just thought--" He stopped suddenly, his voice choked from him. The young master cradled the new camera in his hands and sighed. "I just thought you would like it."

"Sir?" Jeeves couldn't help but be perplexed. His master was rarely given to dark moods, and for such a small misunderstanding, he seemed unaccountably flushed and upset.

"Oh, never mind, Jeeves. It's just a trinket, but if you don't want it, I suppose I can't make you take it." And without meeting his man's eye, Bertie fled the room with the article in question.

Jeeves brooded and plotted. Slowly, a fingertip came to rest against his thoughtful lips. His young master had seemed out of sorts lately, nervous and skittish when Jeeves dressed him, quiet for long periods in the evening at his piano, playing the notes without giving voice to the song. This latest incident was perhaps the culmination of some drawn-out inner struggle in Mr Wooster. Such a grand gesture for a mere manservant was certainly out of the ordinary, even for such an understanding employer.

The package in which the camera had arrived was still sitting in the foyer, where Bertie had ripped it open in excitement just minutes before. Jeeves went to tidy it away and found the processing tank along with the instructional pamphlet. As Jeeves was the sort of man who could not resist a pamphlet on a subject of which he knew little, he opened it crisply and began scanning the pages. The Kodak Company promised that this new model would produce "Only The Barest Amount of Smoke!" when used properly, and Jeeves began absorbing those rules of usage. It was actually a very clever device, he could see.

After he was finished reading the instructions, Jeeves gave the situation a moment's consideration. Then he placed the pamphlet in his breast pocket and made his way to the master bedroom, where his master had run.

He found Bertie lying on his bed, his face pressed forcefully into a pillow. The camera sat forgotten on the dresser. Jeeves picked it up and gave a soft cough into his fist. Bertie twisted his head round in surprise.

"I must apologise, sir. This," he hefted the camera in his hands, "is more than a trinket, and you were very kind to give it to me."

"So you'll take it on your holiday?" Bertie asked with rising hope.

Jeeves shook his head. "No, sir. I think not." He unlatched the front clasp and extended the bellows out to form the scope of the camera.

Bertie frowned. "Oh. Well. Like I said, Jeeves, you don't have to take it if you-- I say, what are you doing?"

Jeeves looked up from his examination of the aperture setting to say, "I intend to use your gift, sir, in a more fitting way. Instead of bringing you photographs of Spain, I wish to bring to Spain a photograph of you." He busied himself once more with the camera, loading it with the included films the way the instructions dictated. "Would you allow me the liberty, sir?"

"A photograph of me?" Bertie turned more fully onto his side to observe Jeeves. "Whatever for?"

"For remembrance," Jeeves said cryptically before raising the camera to his eye, lining his iris up with the pinhole. "May I, sir?"

Bertie opened his mouth, then closed it, then nodded with a small smile. "How shall I pose, Jeeves?" He struck a silly posture with his hand behind his head like a movie starlet, a cigarette from his sidetable in his other hand. "Like this?"

"Perhaps something more becoming a young gentleman, sir," Jeeves said, though his hint of a twitch at the corner of his mouth belied his chastisement.

"Right. Here we are." Bertie sat up and faced the camera with a serious expression, his own mock-stuffed frog. It was not very successful, and after a moment of Jeeves' incredulous eyebrow raised over the camera, Bertie exploded into laughter.

Jeeves pressed down the plunger with his thumb, and the camera flashed with a loud poof and (as promised by Kodak) a modicum of smoke.

"Jeeves!" Bertie exclaimed through his gasping chuckles. "You can't have taken a picture of me like that! You must take a proper one."

"Of course. One moment, sir." Jeeves wound the film, and Bertie attempted to compose himself.

He sat on the edge of the bed, his hands patting down his wild hair. "How do you want me to look?"

"As you do always, sir," Jeeves said, bringing the camera up to peer through the viewfinder once more.

"No Victorian lithographs, then? Sitting still for hours with a large frown?" Bertie aped the kind of face he meant, his brows drawn comically.

The camera flashed again. Bertie couldn't contain his horrified laughter.

"I say! Are you trying to immortalise me forever looking like an ass, Jeeves?" Bertie made a half-hearted grab for the camera. "This foolishness must cease!"

"I am sorry, sir. The temptation is, I fear, very great." Now even Jeeves couldn't entirely suppress the smirk that grew on his face as he turned the film crank.

With a wicked gleam in his eye, Bertie grabbed for the camera again, and Jeeves dodged, and Bertie parried by getting to his feet and going for it again. Jeeves feinted left, and so did Bertie, and somehow they ended up much, much too close, with Jeeves holding the camera behind his back, away from Bertie, and Bertie embracing him in an effort to reach it.

The young master's laughter died away, and Jeeves stood stiffly in the ring of his arms. They stood there, cheek to cheek, for some time. Bertie slowly pulled away, his face flushed pink and his eyes darting from Jeeves'.

He licked his lips and tried to speak. "Jeeves, I-- That camera . . . ."

Jeeves, just as slowly, lifted the contraption to his eye once more and trained the lens on Bertie, close up to his beautiful face, his parted lips, his downcast eyes. Bertie felt the eye of the thing on him, and he looked up just in time for Jeeves to press the shutter button.

Bertie blinked away the spots of light from the flash. "Jeeves, why--?"

"Because now I will forever see you in that moment," Jeeves said quietly, "the moment before I kissed you for the first time." The camera fell with a soft thud on the bed, and Jeeves stepped forward and did exactly what he had said he'd do.

Bertie was too shocked to react at first, but it took him only a second to cling to the silken back of Jeeves' waistcoat, to kiss back with all the passion Jeeves knew him capable of. When they parted, Bertie tried to look away, but Jeeves framed his face in his hands and kept him there, speaking to him only with his gaze.

"A--are you positive, Jeeves?" Bertie brought an unsteady hand to rest on Jeeves chest, over his hammering heart.

Jeeves nodded, and Bertie took a small step back, out of Jeeves' grip. "These photographs. Will you develop them in your pantry and take them with you to Spain?" Bertie asked as he unbuttoned his own waistcoat with shaking fingers.

"Yes, sir," Jeeves answered.

Bertie moved on to loosen his tie and unbutton his collar. "Will you take a peep at them every few evenings? Leaf through them after a day of fishing?"

"Undoubtedly, sir."

"What will you think when you look at them?" Shirt studs and cuff-links coming undone.

Jeeves' breath caught in his throat. He watched Bertie shuck off his shirt and undervest and drop them to the carpet. "I imagine I'll be thinking all sorts of things, sir."

"Such as?" Bertie, emboldened, undid his flies with his eyes still holding Jeeves' eyes.

Jeeves brought up the camera and pressed the shutter button, capturing Bertie within the frame.

"Such as," he said as he wound the film once more, "the thrill of seeing you bare."

"But you haven't seen me bare, Jeeves."

"I will." This was said with such confidence, such faith, that Bertie couldn't stop himself from laughing brightly as he shimmied out of his trousers and pants.

The first photograph of Bertie in the altogether would reveal (when Jeeves developed them the next day) a nervous, whipcord thin young man, conscious of his nakedness and not knowing where to place his hands. He brought a palm up to rub at the back of his neck, a gesture which stretched the skin of his flanks tightly over his many ribs; Jeeves pressed the shutter's plunger and captured that without a second thought.

The next photograph showed Bertie at last looking up from the ground, his eyes bright and shining somehow amid all the different grey tones. His mouth was parted as if in protest, his arm flung wide.

The next: Bertie seated on the edge of the bed, his palms flat on the bedspread on either side of his narrow thighs. His lap was now fully in view, and his cock was half-erect against his stomach.

The final photograph featured Bertie on his back with the camera's eye hovering above him. His prick was stiff and straining in his hand, and his eyes were slits, fair hair mussed against the duvet. There was something somehow casual about how his free hand was curled on the bed while his legs were canted slightly apart. If one studied the photograph closely (and one did), it was apparent that the small specks along Bertie's forehead and upper lip were glimmering beads of perspiration. He was looking away from the camera, as if entranced by something outside of the frame. Only Jeeves, the photographer, knew what that something was: Jeeves' hard cock tenting his pinstriped trousers as he snapped the picture of his perfect, nude master.

This was what Bertie had looked like moments before Jeeves had tossed aside the camera, stripped out of his uniform, and joined his master in bed for the first time. This was the photograph Jeeves carried with him in a hidden pocket of his billfold when he went to Spain, when he went on holiday every time thereafter, when he and Bertie were separated by distance or bad feelings or ill luck. This was the photograph that had caused Jeeves, when he had begun developing it in his little dark room, to stroke himself to completion as the barest hint of lines darkened and coalesced into his new lover's shape. This was a photograph that Jeeves never showed anyone, not another living soul, for the rest of his days. Because this was a Bertie that would always belong to him, put down on paper, trustingly waiting for his touch.

"I am sorry, sir," he would say when Bertie inquired after the picture, "but that particular image did not develop clearly. Perhaps my hands shook in its taking."

It was a lie, and Bertie acknowledged it with a wry grin and a nip to Jeeves' nippable lips. "Your hands did not shake when you took _me_ ," he pointed out.

But Bertie allowed Jeeves his secret token, his beloved photograph with the scalloped edges, creased and worn after many viewings. And many dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me [@triedunture](https://twitter.com/triedunture) on Twitter.


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